SEPTEMBER MOURNING talks to TINAS at Download 2015

Making their Download Festival debut this year was September Mourning, so we thought it might be a good opportunity to sit September herself down on a sofa and have a little chat about exactly what the band’s about while she had obviously been reading all of my previous work and decided to make her own “-core” joke. The cheek of it…

This was your first time at Download how did you find it?

Awesome. It’s like a culture here, it’s not even like a festival. People camp from like Wednesday and do like barbecue’s and shit, it’s crazy!

Some people wish they hadn’t when it starts shitting it down…

Oh yeah and then you’re like “oh shit, there’s my barbecue and there’s the rain and mud…”

Was Download on your radar before you got asked to play?

Well, we were actually supposed to play last year, but I had to stay in the recording studio to finish the album, but this year we played it and we loved it so it was great.

What’s been your worst festival experience?

Playing-wise it’s a weather thing for me just because of the costume. This wasn’t bad for weather coz it’s really cold and I’m in all leather so that’s great, but when you’re playing a giant parking lot in the middle of Las Vegas at 12pm you’re getting cooked like a piece of meat in an oven! We did that and it was brutal…

Where does the idea for the costume come from?

Well September Mourning is basically based on a storyline. We wanted to do a theatrical band, but not in the sense of a band with some theatrics – we wanted to do a band based on a story and so the reason we dress this is way is we are those characters on stage. September is a Reaper-human hybrid and basically she was human and a Reaper was sent by Fate to take her soul, he fell in love with her and sacrificed his powers to her so that she could keep living an immortal life and she becomes this Reaper. So because of her humanity she wants to do well by humans and she doesn’t want Fate controlling whether they live or die so she starts swapping them out with different souls for different souls and Fate doesn’t like that, so he sends all this Reapers down to off September, so it’s this huge epic battle between the world of the living and the world of the dead…it’s kinda cool!

It’s deep!

If you’re into fantasy novels and graphic novels and Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and stuff like that, you’ll totally love this.

The story came first right?

The story totally came first.

So is this the soundtrack to the story?

Yeah it is – when I started this band I wanted to think what could I do in a story that would give me emotion to write off of? If I took your soul – Because she’s a Reaper who takes souls…

Please don’t…

Right! I would feel everything you have felt in your entire life in 3 seconds. Every memory, every emotion, everything you have felt from the day you were born to now I would feel. So that’s a lot of material to write to. So September writes about the souls that she takes and the lessons she learns and preaches it and that’s kinda the show and it follows the story of the comic books.

Are you able to separate September from yourself?

Well when I take off the make up and the costume yeah. I mean, all the make up and costume take about 3 hours to get into and I think any kinda of theatre those actors go through the same thing. Even Heath Ledger became The Joker, he became that character, but he couldn’t take it off unfortunately…

Are you going to check out anyone else while you’re here?

I hope to get a chance to see Kiss.

You’re not jetting off anywhere straight away then?

We got a couple more shows to do in Europe and the Metal Hammer Awards to do and that should be fun.

What’s the rest of 2015 got in store for you guys?

Well we’re releasing an EP in the fall along with the comic book and a tour to support that, so we’re going to be pretty busy in the fall and winter.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about EP’s Vs LP’s – where do you stand on that?

I think it depends on what you wanna do. For us an EP makes sense off the comic book and stuff like that. People go through information so fast nowadays because you can access anything off your phone and music isn’t as sellable as it was 10 years ago and people don’t seem to buy albums like they used to, they download songs. So to me, as long as you’re getting a steady stream of material out to your public you’re fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s a song a month or an album, but if you’re doing an album you need to follow it up with another album pretty quickly.

What’s the one thing you really want to achieve with this band?

I just want to get the story and concept to a point where I can make a movie or TV show or just get it to a place where it’s beyond music, but using our music within it. As far as the music part of it (goes), I’d just love to be able to play wherever and whenever and make like a culture like Download has a culture…GEEKS UNITE! NERDCORE!

Final question – what’s the one luxury item you couldn’t do without on tour?

Eyelashes! I go through like a pair a night. Actually I custom make these (points to her top eyelashes), they’re 5 pairs of lashes and these bottom ones are just another pair so I go through about 6 pairs a night…